The disclosure provides an insight into the concern raised in a recent letter to Congress by the inspector general, who accused the agency of not keeping the necessary records for the Jan. 6 investigation.
Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, after receiving an initial batch of documents that included “hundreds of thousands of disclosures from agency documents, policies, radio communications, emails, briefings and interviews,” he said. bid in june 2021 text messages sent and received by 24 Secret. Service personnel between December 7, 2020 and January 8, 2021, according to the letter, the details of which had not been previously reported. The letter does not identify the 24 staff members.
“The Secret Service sent the response records that it identified, namely a text message conversation from former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund to former Secret Service uniform division chief Thomas Sullivan, requesting assistance on January 6, 2021, reported that the agency did not have any more records responding to the DHS OIG’s text message request, “wrote Deputy Director Ronald Rowe. to the letter to the committee on 6 January.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who is a member of the select committee, said in an interview with MSNBC Tuesday before the panel had received “a text message” that she had not yet seen, but that the group would “chase.” . more information as a commission soon “.
“In their letter they gave no indication that they had secured the phones in question and that they had done forensic work with them. That is something we want to know,” Lofgren said. “That obviously doesn’t look good. Coincidences can happen, but we really need to get to the bottom of this and get a lot more information than we currently have.”
Beyond the Inspector General’s requests, Congress also sent the Secret Service a comprehensive request for preservation and production on January 16, 2021, requesting documents and materials related to January 6. A second request in March from various House committees specifically requested communications “received, prepared or sent” between 5 and 7 January.
The agency explained that it was up to the employees to carry out the necessary preservation of the records of their phones. The letter said the service provided staff with a “step-by-step” guide to preserving cell phone content, including text messages, before the phone migration began on Jan. 27. He went on to explain that “all Secret Service employees are responsible for properly preserving government records that can be created through text messages.”
The Secret Service wrote in the letter that it was still working to determine if any relevant information had been lost in the phone migration, but said it was “currently unaware of the text messages issued by Secret Service employees” that were only · tendered by the inspector general “who they were.” is not preserved “.
“The Secret Service continues to make great efforts to further assess whether relevant text messages sent or received by 24 people identified by the DHS OIG were lost due to the migration of Intune and, if so, whether these texts they can be recovered, ”Rowe wrote. . “These efforts include extracting available metadata to determine which texts, if any, have been sent or received on the devices of identified people.”
The agency is interviewing all 24 users “to determine if the messages were stored in locations that had not yet been searched by the Secret Service.”
The letter noted that the Secret Service provided 10,569 pages of documents in an initial response to the congressional summons last week. This production included post-action reports, a timetable, and policy changes in response to January 6th. The agency also sent the committee details of how it classified the relocation of then-Vice President Mike Pence during the riots as an “unusual protection event.”
In a hurry to respond to last week’s demands, the letter notes, the Secret Service sent unwritten material and asked the committee to consult with the agency before revealing any information to the public.
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN’s Mary Kay Mallonee contributed to this report.